That dang trailer

Chads a builder. It's just what he does. He cant help himself.

So when we found out we'd be moving to Arizona, Chad insisted on building a trailer to haul all our things down behind us.

I said no.

Then Chad just kept pushing and pushing, and talking about how much cheaper it would be and how nice it would be to have a trailer for the whole family to use. I kept asking him, "do you really think it's a good idea to spend so much time building something that requires so much attention to detail and time while finishing your last semester, taking finals, preparing for graduation, packing our house and training our replacements at work?" (which I felt like it was one of those questions that answers itself), but he insisted it would take little time and be very easy to put together. So against my better judgment, I didn't stop him.

He spent hours welding and running around getting wood and steel to put together the trailer. it slowly started to look more and more like a trailer as we got closer to moving day. About 3 days before the big move, it was finished...minus the tires...and the paint. But the deck looked secure and the welds were holding, as far as I could see. So forward in faith I went.

Chads dad, Dan came down a day early and helped with the finishing touches and as they loaded everything on the trailer on Friday, I couldn't believe it but it was finished! It held ALL our belongings and seemed very stable. They took it on the freeway before loading it and said it pulled like a charm. I was still a hair skeptical but very relieved to have SOMETHING to move our things with.

After our horribly sad goodbyes we took off, Chad pulling the trailer behind the truck, then me, then Dan bringing up the rear. My eyes were soaked the first 30-40 minutes of the trip from crying like a baby as we said goodbye to our home for the last 5 years,  so I wasn't as observant as I should have been but the trailer was pulling well despite the wind. What I did notice was that Chad was getting faster and faster, I told him to watch me and make sure he could always see me in his rear view (hoping I could non-naggingly remind him to slow down if I needed to) I pulled back to about 60mph because the trailer was swaying slightly from side to side when the wind hit it or when he started going too fast. He continued to speed up until there were 4-5 cars between us. I couldn't keep up, he was going way to fast. I was worried so I called him and asked him to slow down. He did, but not enough. The wind picked up as we went down a hill and the trailer swayed rapidly. Back and forth, back and forth. Normally it would sway once or twice, then he would slow and regain control, but this time he swayed and swayed, and the swells got wider and wider. I saw the brake lights pumping  over and over until I noticed that with each pump, he lost more and more control. By this point I was screaming through my tears ( as if he could hear me) "Honey, keep it together! Slow down!" The sways turned into tips and the cars between us tapped their breaks out of fear of getting hit by the out of control trailer. I kept screaming, but this time I was screaming prayers, pleading with the Lord to help Chad get back in control! The cars infront of me slowed almost to a stop, we were all just waiting for the inevitable, Chad was going to crash we just didn't know when. The trailer was now in control of the truck and it was bouncing and sliding from one side of the right lane to he opposite side of the left. I picked up my phone, started calling 911 and I screamed one last prayer of desperation.
    I honestly KNOW that the Lord stopped the truck from tipping at that time and allowed Chad to regain control just in time. He pulled to the side of the road and I aggressively maneuvered around the cars in front of me to get to the side where Chad was. As I put my car in park, I wiped my tears, tried to calm my breathing and locked my doors.
    I've never experienced that feeling before. I had felt so helpless and scared. As I prayed/screamed to God, I knew He was there, I felt Him, but I was still so scared, I didn't know I could feel those feelings at the same time. My hands were shaking so badly (for hours afterwards). Chad got out of the car and did what looked to me like a massive release of adrenalin, flexed his fists towards the ground and screamed. I was instantly furious. He had no idea how scared I was. He came back to my window, smiling, and I locked the door. I wasn't even close to ready to talk to him. I said a very sincere prayer of thanks and allowed that spirit of love to envelope me. We were very blessed just then. We all knew it, everyone who saw it knew it. I finally got out of the car, didn't say a thing, just hugged Chad for a long time.
  Finally I said (over and over again) "Don't you ever ever do that ever again. You can't ever do that again." He agreed.
   We looked at the trailer and it showed many signs of being thrashed. We lost a few meaningless pieced of wood and loose items that were packed into the trailer and everything had shifted so far and so quickly to the right and left that the walls of steel that were welded to the sides had snapped and were hanging off the sided. Everything else was still in tact so Chad and Dan harnessed everything down again and timidly got back on the road. Chad agreed to go 20-25 mph slower than he was, keeping him at 55-60mph the whole.way.home. (do that math real quick, that means he was going between 80-90mph when he almost crashed). We only had 2 more hours til Provo where we were stopping for the night so I said a few more prayers and watched the trailer the whole way back. About ten minutes down the road, it happened again. The trailer started tossing from side to side and i started yelling again, luckily he regained control much quicker. It happened one more time and  all pulled over. I was ready to call a Uhaul company and work another day into our moving trip. Dan and Chad talked it over and decided that Chads truck was too light to be pulling the heavy load, especially down hills where the trailer would pick up speed and the truck wasn't big enough to slow it down. Dan had a much bigger truck so he agreed to pull it to Utah and we'd make a plan from there. From then on their were no issues.
  We got to Utah and our Step-brother offered to help reweld the trailer so the boys got to work on the walls and restructured it. Then we decided to wake up even earlier than we were already planning to and reload the trailer to distribute the weight better. Ray and Chad were out there before sunrise taking EVERYTHING off the trailer and back on with the weight mainly over the two sets of tires. Then they tested it, still shaky So they did it again! This time putting more weight in the back of Chads truck too! Finally after testing it, they both felt good about it. It was 9:30 before we got started on our 14 hour drive.
   We bought some walkie talkies so I could beep at Chad if he ever started going faster than I wanted him to and we got on the road. 15 hours later we pulled into the Guttery drive way, safe and sound.

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BUT THAT DANG TRAILER

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We learned a lot from that trip. I learned that sometimes having faith in my husbands abilities and stopping him from doing something stupid can happen at the same time. We also learned that sometimes we have to do stupid things to learn lessons. I learned I really couldn't live without Chad. And we also learned that Chads truck burns through gas differently when its pulling a trailer, but that's another story. :)

SO glad we're in Arizona, so glad that, after a lot of work and "test runs", we have a great trailer for anything we could ever need. And I'm so glad Chads here and that Heavenly Father answers prayers and comforts us when we're most scared and alone.